This is how the new battery technology will allow electric car range to be quintupled

The new battery technology will allow electric car range to be quintupled. Recycled Kevlar nanofibres used in a biomimetic design help solve the problems caused by the passage of time. As you may be noticing over the coming months, electric car technologies are constantly improving.

If we take, for example, the Lucid Air, which has a range of 836 kilometres, we can see that it is far ahead of other electric cars. Nevertheless, there is still room for improvement. Now, a team at the University of Michigan has shown how a network of nanofibres, made from recycled Kevlar, can allow lithium-sulphur batteries to overcome the problems related to their life cycle, such as the number of times they can be charged and discharged.

This is how the technology that will allow the range of electric car batteries to be quintupled works

The Ann Arbor institution, which is 204 years old, states that the bio-inspired battery membrane has “enabled a battery with five times the capacity of the industry-standard lithium-ion design”, which gives it the more than a thousand cycles needed to power an electric vehicle.

Professor Nicholas Kotov, who led the research team, has pointed out that there are several reports claiming that lithium-sulphur batteries have a longer life, but do not mention that this comes at the expense of important factors such as capacity, safety, charging rates and resilience. “Today, the challenge is to make a battery that increases the cycle rate from the previous ten cycles to hundreds of cycles and meets many other requirements, including cost.”

Kotov and his team previously relied on aramid nanofibre networks infused with an electrolyte gel to stop one of the main culprits of a short life cycle. Dendrites, which grow from one electrode to the other, pierce the membrane. The substantial aramid fibres prevent the dendrites from doing this.

One problem affecting lithium-sulphur batteries is the small lithium and sulphur molecules that flow towards the lithium, stick to it and, in turn, reduce the battery’s capacity. Using a process called ion selectivity, the membrane can block the particles, also known as lithium polysulphides.

Ahmet Emre, a postdoctoral researcher, added that “inspired by biological ion channels, we designed highways for lithium ions where lithium polysulphides cannot pass the tolls.”